


Invisible Ink

by ctimene



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Tattoo Parlor, Human Disaster Matt Murdock, M/M, Slow Build, Tattoos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-27
Updated: 2016-09-27
Packaged: 2018-08-18 04:33:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,315
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8149225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ctimene/pseuds/ctimene
Summary: “Hello, welcome to Josie’s, I’m Foggy, what are you looking for?”“Uh, nothing,” the guy replies, and Foggy is nonplussed for the nanosecond it takes to put together glasses, cane, and the way Hottie McHotFace is gazing absently over his shoulder.“Oh, oh, you’re blind, dude, sorry. But, uh, this is a tattoo parlour?”“I know.” The guy sighs. “I lost a bet?”Or: The One Where Foggy Is A Tattoo Artist And Matt Is The Worst





	

**Author's Note:**

> I am not a tattoo artist. Do not treat tattoos like Matt does, you will get pregnant and die. 
> 
> Content note: Needles, references to PTSD, risky sex. Let me know if there are others I should add!

The air is alive with the sound of needles when the hottest guy Foggy’s ever seen wanders into Josie’s parlour. It means he’s the only one free to greet the guy, because their new receptionist is in a chair under Rob (the employee discount is insane, but it’s sound business).

“Hello, welcome to Josie’s, I’m Foggy, what are you looking for?”

“Uh, nothing,” the guy replies, and Foggy is nonplussed for the nanosecond it takes to put together glasses, cane, and the way Hottie McHotFace is gazing absently over his shoulder.

“Oh, oh, you’re blind, dude, sorry. But, uh, this is a tattoo parlour?”

“I know.” The guy sighs. “I lost a bet?”

 Foggy adds the satchel, worn sneakers and terrible haircut to his previous deductions. “College student?” he hedges, and Hottie nods. “What are we talking? Jigglypuff? My Little Pony? Chuck Norris?”

“Marci Stahl is smarter than me,” the guys says, a tad miserably. “I’m Matt, by the way.” Foggy clicks his tongue against the back of his teeth.

“Look, far be it from me to turn down work, but this is a terrible idea,” he starts. Matt sets his jaw, looking like the dictionary definition of stubborn, and Foggy prepares himself for a tricky argument. Sure, he’s only 24, but he’s been at this for six years by this point, he can stick to his guns. “One, you are way too young to get someone’s name on you, unless you’ve already married this girl, in which case, I’m not judging.

“Except I am, obviously,” he adds, shrugging. “Oh, I shrugged. And now I’m waggling my finger, because two, tattoos are fun and awesome and not to be used as some sort of punishment or forfeit after whatever terrible drinking game you kids are playing these days.”

Matt interrupts him then, not with actual words but with a smile that stops Foggy’s mouth running away with itself. (It gives Foggy’s mouth other ideas. Lots of Foggy’s parts, actually). “Bullshit, you’re the same age as me,” he says into the silence.

“How the hell would you know?”

“Jigglypuff? My Little Pony? I can’t see for shit but I can hear ‘millenial’ all over you.”

“Okay, you shut your mouth, I am old and wise beyond my years, and anyway, THREE, we don’t do braille tattoos.”

“There are braille tattoos?”

“Oh my god, what research did you do? Did you just lose the bet and go find the nearest parlour?”

“Nooooooo,” Matt says, and boy, that is the worst lying face Foggy has ever _seen_ , and he deals with fourteen year olds trying to get illegal tats like four times a week.

“Okay, you, out, now. And don’t think you can go to another shop, I am sending your picture to the super secret league of tattoo artists. Come back when you’ve done, like, any research. At all. Fucking Google would do.” A thought occurs to him. “You can Google shit, right, that wasn’t, like, horribly offensive and awful? Cause you’re an idiot and I really want to have the moral high ground here.”

Matt laughs, which, _pretty_ , and in other circumstances, Foggy would love to ink him. “I can Google shit. I will. Promise. Although you haven’t got a camera to take my picture, so I could go elsewhere.”

“Bitch, please, I’m an artist, I will draw you,” and he doesn’t mean for it to sound so _fond_ or, like, intense, but Matt colours slightly and Foggy hopes his beard hides his blush before he remembers, duh, blind.

Matt reaches behind him for the door and finds it first time, impressive, and he gives Foggy another smile. “I’ll be back,” he says, and Foggy wags his finger again, and narrates it.

“Research!”

The door closes with a jaunty jangle and Josie coughs ominously behind him. “You’re banned from greeting customers, Nelson. Rob, tell Karen she can only get work done when Foggy’s busy if we ever want to have clients.”

“I can hear you,” Karen murmurs, still face first down in the chair, but they all know she gets too blissed out mid-tattoo to remember anything said to her.

Foggy rolls his eyes. “You’d have turned him down too.”

“He was cute. You know how cute sells. We’d have had a line of girls around the block,” Josie responds.

“Cute but stupid.” They both sigh. It’s kind of a shared kryptonite.  “I’ll give him another chance if he comes back.” Which, like, is not going to happen after Foggy’s admittedly appalling customer service, but it mollifies Josie.

+

Matt’s back the next day.

“No!” Foggy yells as he makes his way across the room to his actual client, Jemma, who is deciding whether or not to have colour in her tattoo — a series of concentric circles and dots that she calls an atomic diagram and that Foggy calls neat as all hell.

Karen moves to intercept Matt, who is already pulling a face, and Foggy gamely soldiers on, showing Jemma some of his earlier work. “If you need a minute with him, it’s fine,” she says, because she’s crazy polite. “I need time to look these over.” Foggy shuffles, reluctant, and she shoots him a look and uses lots of consonants in a scary English way: “Stop hovering and talk to the human puppy, Foggy. Please.”

He sighs and makes his way over to the reception desk, where apparently the idiot is being charming, judging by the way Karen is blushing up to her eyebrows like the true ginger she is under all that blonde hair dye.

“I want a tramp stamp,” Matt announces, proudly, and Foggy has to bend quite a bit to whack his forehead on the counter repeatedly, but he manages it. Karen can’t stop laughing. “But we’ll do it small. Small as you can.”

Foggy groans, forehead still on the desk. “I said research, Matthew. Not Googling ‘How to get the shittiest tattoo money can buy’. You know what happens to small script tattoos? They blur to shit.”

“I know. But this way I get to keep my bet, but Marci doesn’t have one over on me for all time, and nobody has to see it. And I can get it covered up in a couple of years.” He smiles, and urgh, no, that should not be the most persuasive part, even if his argument is crap.

“You are asking me to do a shitty tattoo,” Foggy says, bluntly, leaning in to make his point. It’s kind of presumptuous, cause it’s Josie’s name above the door and Rob’s got a good rep with the creative/hipster crew for his new school work, but Matt is a human disaster of a client, and Foggy has no luck. Matt smiles _again_ , the dickhead. “You tell anyone I did it, I’d be out of business.”

“I wouldn’t show anyone,” Matt promises, kind of breathy, and oh, that stirs a hot lick of something inside Foggy, and he’d have to lie to say he doesn’t want to put his ink under Matt’s skin. Not particularly professionally speaking.

First, however, arguing: “It’s going to be above your ass, Matt, people are going to notice.” Karen coughs, loudly, and goes to see to Jemma.

“I wear clothes, Foggy,” he says, and Foggy manages to not say _Shame_ out loud. “It’s- It’s _important_  to me that I keep my word on this, okay?” And then he fucking flutters his eyelashes, which should not be hot when he can’t actually _focus his eyes_ but hey, apparently today is a day of new things, like deliberately shitty tats and Matt-specific turn ons.

Foggy kind of agrees partly to get Matt over with, because if he has to deal with this level of cute and flirty and out of his league any longer his productivity is going to nosedive. “Fine, fine, you can have a slot to go over design in about an hour, go get a coffee, stop _smirking_ , Jesus, I am going to charge you so much for this.”

Matt, being clearly an obstinate bastard, sits in their lobby — ie, the bench by the door — for the full hour while Foggy finalises the design and appointment time for Jemma, who keeps shooting knowing looks at him as if he doesn’t know exactly why she’s getting fluorine, iodine and silicon tattooed on her back. Judgy Brit.

When he’s done, Karen has already helped Matt fill in his paperwork. “We should check about accessible forms,” he murmurs and she nods. He checks it over — Matthew M. Murdock, the name definitely rings a bell, 23, ID checks out, of sound mind, pfft. Paid in cash. Keen.

Foggy approaches the bench. Matt’s reading a braille textbook that looks hefty enough to be weaponry. “So, I’m going to ask you if you have a font preference, and if you make a smartass blind comment I’m going to tattoo you in gothic script letters four inches high.”

Matt is quiet for a long time. “Not Comic Sans, please.”

“Great, very helpful. Hey, you want me to read you our certificates and permits? They’re all up on this wall. Plus a picture of Captain America, cause Rob’s a fanboy.” He sits down next to Matt and starts sketching out a basic script. It’s hard, trying to design a deliberately bad tattoo, but he loves a challenge. He presses hard into the paper and holds it out to Matt. “Can you, like, feel the outline of that?”

Matt nods, and then grins. “You’ve put horns on the M.”

“Well, Marci asked a blind guy to get a tattoo, so it sounds like she has no soul.”

“Accurate,” Matt says, chuckling. “Can we do it now?”

Foggy wants to say no. He wants Matt to go away and realise that Foggy is right, that this is spectacularly stupid. But Karen chimes in with “You’ve got nothing else on today,” and “The second back room is free,” and Matt beams, practically glows like a friggin’ angel.

Matt takes his elbow, feels his bicep and jokes “Lead on, MacBuff,” and Foggy _hates_ him, Christ, he is a cool tattoo artist, he hasn’t been this flustered since he was _sixteen_ and a forty year old _biker_ hit on him, jesus.

The second back room is tiny (but within health inspectorate guidelines…  just) so Matt has to lean past him to put his jacket down. “You can keep your shirt on,” Foggy says, absolutely not squeaking. The lizard on the inside of his left sleeve (his uncle Pat, quite trad, jazzed up with newer colour) looks pretty fucking judgemental as Foggy clears his throat to add, “And, uh, pants just as low as you need it to be. For the tattoo.” Which, Matt being a bastard, is just above the swell of his ass. Fucker.

He also notices a six pack when Matt rucks up his shirt, because why the not, this is his client from hell, he should clearly be the embodiment of every sin in the book.

There’s only one way Foggy knows to get through this kind of torture. Talking. Which, luckily, he is very good at.

“So, this bet. I’m going to need the full story before we can even hope to get started,” he says as he helps Matt into position on the table bench and preps to clean the skin. (There’s literally no way of thinking about skin without coming off like a serial killer, but it’s nice skin.)

“It was more of a debate. I’m a law student, so is Marci. Number one and two in our year.” Foggy doesn’t ask which is which, because Matt’s humble voice is also very much a smug voice). “Anyway, we were up against each other for mock trial, I was defence, she said I wouldn’t be able to defend a guilty client. An imaginary guilty client. I got a bit too… competitive, offered her the choice of forfeit.”

“And she won? I’m going to shave you now, no sudden movements.”

“She was better than me. She played a little dirty, but-” Matt hisses as the safety razor glides over his skin ”-but I was expecting that. It was fair.”

“And lawyers are all about fair,” Foggy hums as he cleans off the foam and goes to prep his needles.

“Law students,” Matt corrects. “I have so many more exams to pass before I’m a lawyer.”

“Still, your folks must be proud.” Matt’s back tenses, badly, and Foggy swears. “Shit, sorry, let’s move on from that.”

“No, it’s — you’re good at reading people, aren’t you?”

“I stick needles in people professionally, it’s kind of necessary to not hurt someone. Or let someone rush into a bad decision. Like this one, Matthew Murdock,” he adds, pointedly, and Matt gives a kind of shiver and oh, no, bad, back to sexy tattooing which is Josie’s number one do not do this rule, the hypocrite. Luckily, Foggy has an idea to destroy the sexy. “Hey, you sound kind of local, but this is a weird guess: are you that kid that was in that accident, like ten years ago? Saved the old guy?”

“I just did what anyone would’ve.”

“Bullshit. Also, if you shrug again, you’re gonna have an M half the way up your back, hold still now.” He applies the thermal trace and pats it down. The design is small, barely a couple of inches across, not too time consuming if a bit fiddly. “If you wanted to, you could fake it with just this,” he offers, one last get out to preserve whatever dignity he has left as an artist. (Please. He lost that the second he agreed, the second Matt smiled.)

“Stick me.”

He sets the needle going, and from there it’s work, concentration and focus. He keeps the conversation going because, hello, he can, because he’s _good_ and it keeps clients relaxed and happy, but his replies are to a minimum as he inks the lines. So he learns a lot about Matt, and Columbia, law classes, nuns, Thurgood Marshall and a dive bar he hadn’t heard of that sounds right up his street.

Josie pokes her head in at one point and tells Foggy, casually, “That’s going to look like shit in a couple of years.”

“Hey!” Matt says, as Foggy replies “He knows. Quiet, you ask for the bad tattoo, you get the chorus of judgement with it. He’s not allowed to tell anyone where he got it,” he adds to Josie.

“Hmm. I like the horns. He could’ve put something gorgeous on you, you know,” she adds mournfully, and Foggy doesn’t quite swell with pride, but there’s, you know, a manly smile of gratitude, maybe an equally manly flush. He could have, too, cause of the aforementioned nice skin. (Still sounds serial killerish).

She retracts her head and shuts the door, and it’s quiet for a moment as Foggy rounds the ‘m’ in ‘me’. “I’m sorry,” Matt says, “if I bullied you into lowering your standards or, um, asked you to do something you’re unhappy with-”

“Oh, shhh. I said I’d do it, you paid me, we both agreed you’re a dumbass. I have one letter to go, you can’t back out now. Also, I realise you cannot see me, but I am tough as nails, no one bullies me into anything.” It’s a lie, like a massive lie, but the sleeves trick a lot of people. “Right, you’re done, and you solemnly swear that you can’t come crying to me when it fades and smudges and looks all kinds of terrible because of your bad decisions, okay?”

“How about this,” Matt says, twisting to face him over one shoulder just as Foggy switches his focus from that one patch of skin to the whole package and wow, could he not, Jesus, what is the point of facing him, he can’t even _see_. Matt’s shirt is still rucked up, and his lip is a little red from where he must have been biting it, he is smiling with teeth — all of Foggy’s professionalism floods out of him, there is a puddle of professionalism on the floor, which is also where Foggy’s jaw is, fuck. “When I need to get it covered up, I’ll come to you, and you can put something gorgeous over it, okay?”

 _No_ , Foggy wants to say, _that is pretty much the exact opposite of what I just said, you utterly terrible person_. “Uh,” he actually says, cranking his jaw back into place, “like what?”

Matt sits up, gingerly, and shrugs. “A cross, maybe?”

“I AM NOT TATTOOING A CROSS OVER YOUR ASS, WHAT THE HELL KIND OF CATHOLIC ARE YOU?”

He can hear Karen laughing through three doors as he applies the bandage and talks Matt — who is grinning absurdly, he is a bad man, and Foggy tells him so — through proper aftercare. The shop’s almost done for the day, so he has to hustle a bit, and he keeps playing the offended artist. Still, on the doorway Matt turns and takes his hand between both of his and says “thank you,” so sincerely Foggy gets a hitch in his throat. He may stay in the doorway watching Matt tap his way down the street a little longer than strictly necessary. Maybe.

“You got his number, right?” Karen asks from the desk.

Foggy shakes his head. “We don’t date clients, Karen.”

“ _Foggy_ doesn’t date clients,” Rob interjects. Then, with a rueful shake of the head: “But it’s pretty sensible of him.” They all have horror stories, none more than Josie, who stays mum but cleans her station with a little more clatter.

Karen sighs. “At least tell me you got his shirt off.”  

“Oh god, so ripped. And his skin… Urgh, I sound like Hannibal Lecter, drink please.”

They lock up and go drink in the big back room, and Foggy sketches out a whole font with horns and wings. Just in case. But he’s pretty sure he’ll never see Matt Murdock again.

+

Of course he shows up two months later. Karen’s still there, but starting to get a bit restless, flighty — not that anyone’s surprised — but she crows with delight when Matt walks through the door. “Foggy!” she sing-songs. “It’s your favourite customer!”

Foggy is bent over a kid called Johnny, the son of one of his actual favourite customers, so he just calls back “They’re all my favourites” while he focuses on covering up the gang sign the kid had got in juvie, the idiot. (Johnny is remarkably contrite, but no one involved is kidding themselves that he might not end up back inside again, so Foggy’s turning that skull into a dolphin with attitude.) When he finally looks up and sees Matt grinning, it feels too late to add a caveat.

“Stop making bets against smart women. I learned that when I was fourteen, you can have it for free.” He colours over a swirl in the wave on Johnny’s neck with a graceful flick and he's impressed by the way he doesn't even flinch. Then again, for all he's 18 the kid has also been shot twice. All the metal in Foggy’s body is there by his choice.

“I’m here of my own free will,” Matt says. Foggy sighs.

“Make an appointment like a normal person.”

“I did!” Foggy frowns, because his next appointment is with a ‘Mike Murlock-’

“Karen, I will have you burned at the stake as a witch,” he yells. She does not help her case by cackling.

“If you could see your face! If either of you could see his face, I mean. It’s a good face, Matt.”

The pair of them gossip and murmur at the reception desk for the fifteen minutes it takes Foggy to finish up with Johnny, and he tries really hard not to care that he can’t hear a word they’re saying. They look good together, he notes — Karen’s let her natural colour come back, so she looks like a Pre-Raphaelite painting, and Matt’s, well. Let’s not get into that. He’s standing with his hip popped though, a little more swagger than the last time he was in the shop, and Foggy has to swallow before he makes his way over.

“So, exactly how are we hammering out a design you won’t be able to see for a tattoo you won’t be able to see?”

“Don’t be an asshole, Foggy.” That’s Karen.

“Yeah, don’t be an asshole, Foggy.” That, far too amused, is Matt. “I want a pair of boxing gloves here.” He cups the top of his left arm, where a T-shirt would cover it. “Can you do that?”

Foggy would like to shake his portfolio at Matt, vigorously, but he can’t pick on the blind guy. At least, not more than he already does. “Any particular art style?” he asks, and it may be stupid, but he knows Matt could see until he was, what, nine? That’s old enough to have opinions on art.

“Not cartoonish,” Matt says immediately, vindicating him. “Otherwise, I trust your judgement. I trust you.”

Karen slaps her hand over her mouth to stop her ‘Awww’ escaping and Foggy thanks every goddess he’s ever inked on an arm that Matt can’t see his blush. “Okay then, give me a few minutes, I’ll work something up.”

Matt sits a little close while he’s sketching out a basic look. He also lets Foggy make way too many decisions for something being permanently etched on his skin.

“Do you want colour?”

“What do you think?”

“Red,” Foggy replies, instead of the detailed explanation of the different effects of colour and black linework he’d had ready. He’s been working  mostly on realism lately, he knows he can make it look good, but it feels so utterly weird to have a client choosing him without knowing his art style, without seeing it. In fact…

“Are you sure you want me to do it? Rob does amazing new school work, and Josie’s the best in town if you want black and grey style. Or if you want something more traditional, I’m allowed to recommend another parlour.”

“The look of it isn’t really my priority,” Matt says, dry. “I want it there, that’s all. And I don’t know if I like your work, but I like the way you work. The first one went down a storm with Marci, by the way. She wanted to know who did it. I didn’t tell.”

“Well, thanks.”

“I can’t have her steal you.” Said with a smirk, because really, Foggy’s boundaries needed pushing.

He finishes the design and lets Matt feel over it, like before. This time, he has feedback — they add a seam, in gold, take out a crease, make the laces less neat. Matt frowns a lot, closes his eyes, and Foggy realises it’s a specific pair he’s trying to remember.

He doesn’t pry, but once Matt’s in the chair (the one in the window this time, shirt off, vest on, if that doesn’t bring in customers nothing will) he starts to explain. About his dad, and boxing, and his last fight. He talks until he doesn’t have words left to talk with, and his eyes are shiny, and Foggy thinks that if he ever sees Matt Murdock cry it might kill him.  

“He never wanted me to fight. Brains, not fists. He got me the money for Columbia with his fists though. It's a bit complicated. Devil’s in the detail.”

A silence, and then Foggy takes over the conversation as he preps his next ink. “I almost went to Columbia,” he says, because it's about the least clumsy segue he can think of.

“Oh?”

“Yeah, except, you know, who would pick an Ivy League over this?” He means to be sarcastic, but it comes out way too sincere and Rob gives him a soft look over Matt’s head, because Rob is fucking adorable.

“How did you get started doing this then?”

“It was a summer job when I was sixteen. I mean, uh, eighteen. Definitely eighteen. My uncle Pat had a shop down in Bed-Stuy, before it got fancy. But I spent a couple of summers working as the shop bitch, cleaning everything, making coffee, testing small tattoos on my thighs,” Matt chokes, on a laugh maybe, but fortunately the machine is away from his skin, so Foggy just taps his chest to remind him to keep still.

“Anyway, my mom still had these hopes I'd be  a lawyer, or maybe something in cured meats, but the summer before I finished high school I worked in the shop again.”

“And this time you were how old?”

“Also eighteen. Because I am a fairy, and we age differently to you mere mortal lawyers. One day, Pat’s finished the line work on this big trad tiger on this guy's sleeve. Tom Belkin’s his name. And he calls me over and gets me to do the colour. Following his design, but still, first time I'd ever worked on a client. And, not to toot my own horn, but I was fantastic. Stayed within the lines and everything.”

He switches inks for a darker red, watching Matt’s face for any sign of discomfort.

“Of course, when Tom came back in two weeks later looking like thunder I tried to hide behind a broom. And look,”

“I can't,” Matt interjects, but Foggy flicks his ear with his spare hand and ignores him.

“Even if I had been the svelte coltish thing of my dreams, that was never going to work. Pat’s laughing, but sort of funny, and Tom grabs my hand and makes me run my fingers over the teeth, the tiger’s teeth, I mean. And he says ‘smooth as a girl’s ass,’ which okay, I am not going to disagree.

“It means I didn’t press too hard and leave scarring,” he explains. “Which can happen with newbies. But  Tom runs the Hellions, you're local, you know ‘em? Great guy, loads of charity work, but I'm eighteen, and terrified. Anyway, he tells Pat I'm a natural, that the Hellions will give me enough work to keep my mom in steak — she was really gunning for me being a butcher back then. I worked like hell on my portfolio, which is a thing of exquisite beauty, my friend, and in the end I turn down college offers, take an apprenticeship here, and, uh, six years later I'm literally the best tattoo artist who ever lived.”

Rob's giving him a look again. Matt just smiles and says “I’m sure,” like he actually means it, and Jesus, his heart can’t take it. His hand stays steady though, because he is actually a pro. “Endorsed by Hell’s Kitchen’s number two biker gang, I’m impressed.”

“I’ll put that on the sign when I open my own shop,” Foggy pledges. “Endorsements: The number two biker gang and Blind Matt Murdock.”

“Most people just say Matt Murdock.”

“I’m not most people.” Case in point, he tells the story of getting his eyebrow piercing, which involves a lot of misunderstandings and screaming, and is entirely not the sort of yarn he should spin for a really hot guy in his tattoo chair, but-

Well, he knows being in the chair can be pretty intense, and Foggy’s aware that his clients _like_  him more than most customers like their artists, that he’s friendly and personable and a little bit talented, but with Matt, it feels like friendship. Fast friendship, sure, but still.

He sees him off again when he’s done, presses the dressing on with care. It’s a beautiful tattoo. “This one you can show people,” he says, “and tell them you got it here.”

Between Matt leaving and his next appointment, he allows himself a little fantasy. It’s something like this: Matt decides he wants a sleeve, even though he can’t see it, even though he’ll hide it under shirts at law firms, it doesn’t matter, Matt already makes no sense, all guilt and books and smiles and muscles. He comes to Foggy and they work out designs, over months. He has some ideas — Justice with her scales, maybe, a crucifix _not on his ass_ , a lot of red, cause it looks good on him. And Foggy will press him onto better artists for different styles, so that it’s perfect, perfectly Matt, and he won’t be Foggy’s client anymore, just Matt, and then… And then…

And then.

And then Foggy doesn’t see Matt again for a year.

 

* * *

 

 

It’s three months after the gloves, and Karen’s teasing him with Matt’s number- “It’s on his forms, Foggy, screw data privacy, this is you having cartoon hearts around your head” -and he is never telling her anything again, ever, when death starts falling from the sky.

Rob, who has actual combat experience that they never, ever talk about, herds them out the back way and to the nearest subway station. They stick by each other through a near stampede and Karen starts shaking in Foggy’s arms and won’t stop as Josie, calm and still holding the design she’d been working on, talks Rob down from a full flashback.

When it’s over — which is hours after it ends, hours spent in the dark waiting for another building to come down, another  _thing_ to snarl its way down to them — they file back to the shop.

It’s not there. Two blocks down there’s a giant serpent smothering half of the Kitchen, but where Josie’s should be there’s a gutted, burnt out wreck. Josie doesn’t cry, Josie _never cries_ , but she has to be held back from digging through still red-hot remains.

Later one of the many, many investigations turns up that a gas main that should have been replaced years before was shaken to pieces by the battle. In a way, it’s kind of a miracle it happened when it did — when people had evacuated behind the police cordon all the way down to 39th.

For a day or two, they drink. They cheer Josie up with plans for a revamped shop, with properly-sized back rooms, maybe another artist, maybe a decent coffee machine so they can be spared Karen’s tar.

Exactly a week after the Battle of New York, Karen texts all of them. I love you all, she writes. I’m carrying your art with me. I’ll tell everyone where I got it. But she’s getting on a greyhound bus. I can’t be here, she gasps, when Foggy dials.

“It’s okay. Send me postcards.”

She does. For all that she never wanted to be a tattoo artist, she has an eye for beauty. She sends him selfies from the Grand Canyon, a print from California, a shot of a stained glass window in New Hampshire. It’s always her last day of being somewhere, she writes in each card. _Last day in Tuscon, Foggy, and I_ \- Last day in Vegas- Last day- And Foggy gets it. She doesn’t want to be found, even as he stays as close to home as possible, in case she comes back.

There’s no pretending after she goes that things can stay in stasis until there’s a new Josie’s. Tattoo work can be itinerant, and Rob’s the next one out of the city, for a guest artist spot in San Francisco. “Hipsters,” Foggy and Josie both warn, but they know it’s for the best. The city’s no longer safe for him, so back to the desert and the wide open sky he’s carried on his back like a burden. Foggy adds a few stars to the ‘scape before he leaves. Josie’s have been on there for years.

Foggy hasn’t got a rep like Rob, but his portfolio gets him work a couple of days a week at one parlour in Brooklyn, and another in the Bronx. He’s touched by how many clients get in touch, stick with him as their artist. There’s plenty of work, too — like every inker in the city he works up his own Avengers tattoos, and a line of Chitauri stuff for those who process their trauma differently.

The constant talking has never been more of a plus. One of his co-workers in Brooklyn calls him an art therapist with a fondness for needles.

He still spends most Friday nights with Josie at various shitty bars — at least, until Clint Peterson gets out of jail, at which point they drink solely at his shitty bar, which is the shittiest of the lot. The insurance people are quibbling over whether they covered fire damage _during_ alien invasions, and Josie’s not sure whether to use the grant from the Stark foundation to lawyer up or set up a smaller shop somewhere outside New York. Either way, the dream of New Josie’s drifts a little more out of reach with each passing month.

+

He’s closing up at the place in Brooklyn — it’s fine, he’s the new guy, he doesn’t love it but he knows how to earn his keep — when the door goes. “Sorry, we’re closed!” he hollers from the back.

“Foggy.”

He does not trip over a bucket getting to the counter, but it’s a close thing. “Matt! Hey! Long time no see! Longer for you, of course.” His jovial tone falls off as he properly looks at Matt. He’s a mess — wet from the rain outside, mouth turned down, and it’s been a hell of a year for every New Yorker but Matt looks hard hit.

It dawns on Foggy that he hasn’t thought about Matt for months. Matt could’ve been dead — the battle took its toll, he lost some clients (first responders love ink and heroism in equal measure.) But even so, his heart thunders in his ears looking at him, and he’s unreasonably glad to see him again.

Matt opens his mouth, tries to say something, fails. He moves his cane from hand to hand until Foggy reaches out and takes his forearm gently, guides him round to the other side of the counter. The idiot’s in just a shirt, no jacket, soaked through, and now Foggy sees that his knuckles are raw and bloody.

“Christ, Matty, what happened?”

“I was gonna say I was looking for you, but, obviously not,” Matt says, but the cadence is all wrong for a joke, like the air’s choked up in his throat. “You got a pen and paper?”

Foggy hands them over, and Matt leans against the counter to write out a word. It’s dead quiet for once — Foggy can hear each drip from Matt’s hair hit the floor. When he passes back the paper, it’s unmistakable, for all that Matt’s both trembling and blind.

 _Elektra_ , it reads.

“I need that,” Matt says. “On me.” And he’s still trembling, teeth chattering.

Foggy backs up a step or two. “Now, okay, I know we had the conversation about tattooing names before, and I lost that round, but I think this time-”

“I need it!” Matt yells. “I need it, and I need you to do it. Nothing makes me feel as good as-” and he clams up at once, slamming his hand on the counter for lack of a full stop. Which, one, rude, two, no.

Foggy draws himself up and steps firmly into Matt’s space. “HEY! You don’t get to give me shit, Matthew. You do not get to — well, in this case, knock over some pens, but this is a tattoo parlour, punching shit in here is dangerous.”

“I’m sorry,” Matt grits out, “I’ll go.”

“Uh, no, that will not be an option just yet. Matt, you look like shit, I’m guessing this” he waves the paper under Matt’s nose “has something to do with that, and your instinct is, hey, I know, tattoo?” He tries to steer Matt to sit down in the receptionist’s chair, but he stays stubbornly upright, leaving Foggy with his hands on his shoulders, feeling each shiver.

Slowly, slowly, Foggy pulls him into a hug. A light one, gentle. Foggy’s always been a hugger, but Rob taught him technique, and the Battle of New York gave him a lot more takers. Matt shakes against him for a second, then hugs back so hard Foggy’s ribs squeak.

“I- I wanted it deep. I want it to scar,” Matt confesses into his shoulder and Foggy’s mouth twists.

“It’d be real comforting if you could settle on a tense there, buddy. Also, I’m going to ignore the part where you thought I’d ever scar you, which is an insult to both my professionalism and also my _soul_. Clearly, I have not been the tattooing sensei to your, um, padawan that I thought I was.” He thinks, though he can’t be sure, that he feels Matt smile into his shoulder. One advantage of never wearing sleeves, although a serious disadvantage is how very damp he is getting clinging to the drowned puppy man.

“Okay, you need a towel, and some tea,” Foggy decides. This time Matt lets him deposit him in the chair. Foggy rescues his towel from his gym kit (unused, much like the gym kit) and sets the kettle to work. He pulls one of the stools up to sit opposite Matt, who has reduced his trembling to the odd shiver now and then, so, hey, progress. “You want to talk about her?”

Matt shakes his head.

“You want to talk about why you thought a tattoo would help?”

“I love my tattoos,” Matt replies, instantly. “I can- I could feel them, when they were new. And now I know they’re always there.”

“And you wanted her to always be there?”

“Don’t armchair psych me. I have a priest for that.”

“Oh ho, my friend, you’re wrong there. This chair has no arms. Or back. It’s really deeply uncomfortable. Much like this conversation is going to be if you keep with the lockjaw and manly resolve.”

For the first time, Foggy feels older than Matt. He’s not, he knows they’re the same age, but Foggy skipped college, went straight into tattooing hearts and teardrops and cover-ups and life imitating art, messy and beautiful, across hundreds of different skins. This isn’t his first bad breakup. He thinks it might be Matt’s.

Matt’s face twists and bends, and Foggy knows it’s because he’s trying not to cry, but what’s the point, when it’s written all over his face? “She tried to make me let it out. It wasn’t good. I couldn’t- not the way she wanted.”

“She’s not here,” Foggy says, and Matt is gone, he dissolves, there’s a hiccup and he’s crying and Foggy doesn’t even register scooting the stool closer, just gathers him in and hugs it out,only the sound of the kettle reaching the boil and Matt’s sobs between them for a few minutes.

Eventually Matt’s more sniffly than weepy, and Foggy adds a teabag to water like the culinary genius he is. “It’s herbal. But not the fun kind. This place has some shitty rules,” he says, as he hands it over.

“I heard about Josie’s,” Matt offers, and Foggy winces, but hey, he can’t preach the gospel of spill your guts and not follow through.

“Yeah, it sucks. It broke up a good team. Everyone was okay, by the way — Rob and Karen have moved on, but we’re all, like, intact, and alive. Which, hey, so are you, that’s good, if I didn’t mention that. Josie’s still trying with the insurance, but they are complete assholes, and legal aid are still completely swamped with, you know, people trying to get payouts over actual deaths. In the end, it was just a shop.” He slurps his tea. It’s awful. Jesus. Give him coffee any day. Even Karen’s. “And Josie’s boyfriend’s out of jail now, so that’s great. He’s got a great bar, not far from Columbia actually, you should check it out. Clint’s, it’s called.”

“Maybe,” Matt says, and okay, they just did emotions, Foggy can handle noncommittal right now. At least he’s drinking the tea. “I should get going.”

Foggy should let him, really. It’s been almost a year since the Battle, New Yorkers are getting their tough skins back, he should be able to look at Matt, damp, miserable puppy that he is, and ignore the drooping mouth, the bloody knuckles, the whole thing. Move along, please. Nothing to see here. But he’s Foggy Nelson, he’s his parents’ son, he looks at something broken and he knows when a bit of elbow grease will fix it.

“I think you should come back to mine,” he says, and Matt startles, so _phrasing_ is clearly an issue. “I’m not coming on to you, man, you look seriously like shit right now. But, uh, you kinda opened with asking me to be complicit in your self harm and I’m not expecting you to skip out of here strewing flowers, but I don’t think you’re okay. I don’t think you should be alone.”

Matt hesitates. It’s not a no, which is more than Foggy expected.

“I have better food than ramen?” he offers to tip the scales, and then he gets a smile. Small, yes, wet, yes, but it’s there.  

They have to get a cab to Foggy’s place, which is still in the Kitchen and remarkably un-rubble. The rent’s got a lot cheaper but the smell’s got a lot worse thanks to the bits of dead chitauri serpent stuck under the remaining debris. Foggy lives with it, but Matt looks a little green until they’re inside.

“I, uh, am gonna guess watching a movie is out. I have some audiobooks, I think.” _I think_ , pfft, he has the entire Harry Potter series, because of a tiny crush on Stephen Fry’s voice when he was twelve.

“Movies are fine, I can follow dialogue if you’re happy to narrate car chases.”

Foggy’s pretty sure he doesn’t own a single film with a car chase in it. He had Netflix, before fucking aliens knocked out his wifi. In the end, he has to be honest: “So, musicals, yay or nay?”

Matt laughs, and fuck it. Foggy spares him the Gilbert and Sullivan, it’s a little intense for a first… movie night, and plumps for _Camelot_. (In retrospect, he tells Matt later, picking a three hour Lerner and Loewe musical from the sixties is also quite intense, but Foggy is blinded by favouritism. Shit. Not blinded. Jesus. Matt laughs then as well.)

He microwaves some leftover lasagna during the overture and shoves it at Matt as he joins him on the sofa. “Eat. Okay, so we’ve got misty forest, and they’ve done a very good job of making Merlyn look like an owl. A very sick owl.”

Matt, for the most part, accepts his lot. He snorts when Foggy spends two solid minutes on Richard Harris’ tremendous eyeliner and at one point — when Foggy can’t help but gesture along to _C’est Moi_ , even though he refrains from singing to keep narrating — calls him the “ultimate theatre camp kid” which is too true to be hurtful.

He finishes the lasagna and is asleep on Foggy’s shoulder before _How To Handle A Woman_ starts, which is probably all to the good. Just for a moment Foggy considers watching to the end of the film — there’s another two hours to go. But no, he decides, letting a customer he bullied into coming home with him rest on his shoulder for two hours while Vanessa Redgrave sings about love… this is not the way to go.

He refuses to let himself think about it in those terms as he gets a blanket for Matt, as he goes to lie down in his own bed, even as he lies motionless, staring at the ceiling. When he finds Matt gone the next day, with a cooling pot of coffee on the side the only sign he was ever there… okay, then he begins to think he overstepped.

The coffee throws him a bit though. Like, not just in a blind person made coffee in his kitchen way — Foggy’s not sure if he’s just drastically underestimated what Matt can do, even in a strange place — but also leaving fresh coffee doesn’t scream ‘You’re a creep entirely divorced from human norms’.

But then, Foggy may be a creep entirely divorced from human norms, how is he supposed to know what’s a good sign?

+

By the time he reaches his next drinks with Josie’s at Clint’s, ten days later, he’s officially panicked. He manages three seconds of asking Josie how she’s been before he blurts: “So I took a client home last week.”

She sucks her teeth. “Cute but stupid.”

“Yes.”

“I mean you, dumbass. It was your boy Matt, right? The blind kid.”

“Okay, Josie, I get that I’m a dude and probably not allowed in the coven, but I am hurt you have not previously revealed your witchcraft.” She fixes a steely eye on him — the one tattooed into her right bicep, which is itself terrifying in size and strength. “Yes, it was Matt, but I didn’t sleep with him, I gave him lasagna and narrated a musical. That’s better, right?” The steely eye ripples. “It’s worse, isn’t it? It’s definitely worse.”

She laughs at him, but she buys him a drink, so it’s not all bad. (He says buys — Clint gives them to her for free, because he’s a fool for love).

A shot of the eel down, and he’s feeling a little more like the scum of the earth, but for more wholesome reasons, like drinking the eel. “How did you remember Matt anyway?”

“I remember all my clients,” Josie says, which is a filthy lie. “Nah, he called me up the other day. Wanted to offer legal advice for the insurance people. Not sure how he did it, but their letters are suddenly a lot more fucking polite. Also, he’s been in the bar a couple of times, from what Clint tells me.” Back when she’d had a chair and her needle in hand, Josie had been the queen of Kitchen gossip. Her powers apparently remain undaunted.

“Oh,” he says, faintly. “That’s good.”

“He’s helping me out, Foggy, I don’t think you traumatised him. You should probably fuck him though, while you still can. Kid was cute, soon he’ll be a lawyer, that combo’s way out of your league.”

“Let’s just nope every single one of those sentiments, shall we?”

“Sure thing.” She slides a napkin across the bar. It’s an elaborate dragon design that would complete his left sleeve perfectly, and that she has been holding out on him for months. It also has a phone number at the bottom. “You don’t get one without the other. Without both others, in fact. Turn it over.”

On the other side is just one word. Nelson’s.

“Foggy’s is a dumb name for a parlour,” she says, blunt.

“Josie’s is a good one.”

She gets that look, the not-crying look, like she’s going to sear her palm on smouldering rebar. “I can’t do it again, Foggy. I built her from the ground up, and they burned it right down again.” Josie looks _old_ for the first time since he's known her. “If your boy gets the insurance through, I’ll help you set it up. Do well, buy me out in a few years.”

“How much eel have you drunk? Not my boy, also,” he adds as an afterthought.

“Should be somebody's. You call the guy, I'll do a full design for your dragon. Open Nelson’s, I'll ink it for you.”

“You're mad.” But he pulls out his phone. “I am calling, although I get my design even if he doesn't pick up, okay, because this is the age of youth and we do not pick up unknown numb- Oh, hi, Matt! It's Foggy Nelson. Uh. I'm with Josie, at that bar I mentioned, Clint’s? And, uh, she mentioned you’d helped out with the insurance and I wanted to say thanks, so, call! Also I should've given you a number ages ago, bad artist etiquette, sorry, I've got some, like, accessible business cards now, if you want one. Although you have my number now. Obviously.”

“Is voicemail just not a thing they teach you kids?” Josie asks. He's never seen her eyebrows go that high.

At the other end of the line, Matt says, “Hi Foggy,” warm and friendly and not at all like he thinks Foggy's going to kidnap him to his apartment and steal his skin. Cause he's not. “It's really good to hear from you.” A pause. “I tried to leave a note after the other night, but all I could find was sketchpads and I didn't want to scrawl over your latest masterpiece. I had to get to a lecture.”

“Oh, right! But coffee, you left me coffee, which if I'm being honest is pretty much the only language I speak that early in the morning.” Josie gives him a withering look, mouths ‘fuck him’, and goes to the bar. “Which, speaking of, we should go for coffee, maybe?” Decisive, strong look, Nelson, great going.

“That’d be really nice.” There’s a sigh that carries down the line, all wistful and romantic, and it does something to Foggy’s guts that he imagines looks like a particularly gruesome scene of a bike crash he did on a Hellion a month or so back. But then Matt follows with: “I could really use a friend right now.”

And Foggy gets it, he does. You don’t see a guy fucking weep in front of his tattoo artist over a nothing break-up. Matt would probably friendzone his literal soulmate right now. And Foggy also knows that friendzoning is not a thing, thank you Jemma, Sharon, the literally hundreds of women who have brought in up in their chair chats since 2010 launched the term into the manosphere. But friend. He can do friend.

So when he gets coffee with Matt — a latte for him, eight shots of espresso in vast cup topped off with whipped cream for Matt which he explains with the word ‘finals’, what the _fuck —_ he knows it’s okay that he smiles too much at a man who can’t see it. That he gets a little wobbly when Matt’s voice goes gravelly for lack of sleep.

He probably could fuck Matt. Maybe not after the first coffee, but at the second movie night ( _Hello Dolly_ , Matt stays awake through this one even though he hates it, it’s so obvious and he thinks he’s hiding it well, Foggy nearly dies laughing.) Maybe after the third ( _Pirates!_ ). He’s too skinny in his Columbia sweatshirt, there are bags behind his glasses and Foggy thinks he’s touch-starved, from the way he demands to be led around the apartment, even though Foggy’s seen him find his way across the same room with half the hand-holding.

Yeah, he could fuck him. He still wants to. But the Nelson family priority of ‘Fix it’ wins out. So instead he feeds Matt, gives him decaff and nighttime tea and a lot of finger wagging, and walks him to the subway with his arm around his shoulders and lets them both pretend it’s for warmth, not comfort. Josie looks him up and down one Friday night and says, “I can’t decide if you need to be more or less of an asshole.”

But he’s content. It doesn’t butcher him, being Matt’s friend. There’s a distance to it — he sees him maybe once or twice a week, or calls him for an hour or two when Matt’s too guilty to leave his textbooks but too exhausted to touch them.

When the insurance finally pays out, more than they could have hoped for, Foggy drags Matt from his dorm — “Miiiidteeeeerms,” he whines, but that word means nothing to Foggy — and makes him join Josie and Clint at the bar. Nelson and Murdock attempt to drink Josie and Clint under the table. They fail.

Somehow, the eel enters the picture and Foggy spends twenty minutes describing Josie’s tattoos to Matt. It’s a portfolio of everyone she’s ever worked with and Foggy’s got a lot of very important tangents about most of them.

“So, okay, we’re onto the right shoulder and, hey, that’s me! It’s not of me, I mean, that would be sweet but I mean, I did this, what, must be six years ago now? It’s a bit pulp-cover, pop-art fusion of a secret agent type woman holding a machine like a gun — have I covered not calling the machine a gun in your training, my young padawan?” He pats Matt’s shoulder absently. “She looks kinda like Black Widow, I guess, but that’s life imitating art. Little black dress number, big emerald eyes — kinda bug-eyed, I admit, but it’s a style — and her hair’s, like carmine-”

“Carmine?”

“Oh, come on, Columbia, you must’ve been a smart kid, you didn’t memorise all the colours before you got your peepers knocked out? Carmine is like, red, but deep, sort of old leather and- wait, I know.” He grabs Matt’s arm and pushes up his T-shirt sleeve to show the boxing gloves, rubs his thumb across the centre of the colour. “This is carmine.” He presses down on one of the highlights. “This is scarlet, it’s lighter. Here, there’s a shadow, and that’s cardinal, cause you weren’t Catholic enough already. Oh, and this is gold,” he says, running his index finger down the seam, and wow, they are way off track here.

Matt sort of gulps at him, like a fish, it is profoundly unattractive and Christ, Foggy adores him. “I know,” he says. “I can feel it.”

Well, that makes no sense. “What?”

“I mean, I could feel it. When it was new. The gold felt different to the rest.” He laughs, a little off. “I guess I’m kind of touch-sensitive.”

“Like an iPad,” Foggy replies, because what the fuck, brain, stop riding the eel and get on board the train to wherever the hell this is going. His brain complies, unfortunately, and he realises he’s still touching Matt’s tattoo. His tattoo. On Matt. He snatches his hand back. “Anyway, that carmine is like, two years old, we need to get more ink on you. Me and Josie owe you, she’d do you a free one.”

“No I wouldn’t. First rule of business, no one gets a free one.”

“She’d totally do it, she’s just joking, I could talk you through her portfolio.”

“That’s very kind, but I’m happy with what I’ve got right now. And Josie’s right, you’re setting up a new business, you can’t afford to work for free.”

“Pro bono! That’s your lawyer-speak for it, right? It is for the greater good. You’ve got such nice skin, Matty.”

There is such a thing as too much eel. “Clint, babe, we’re cutting Foggy off now. Franklin, you need steady hands in the morning.” Josie prises the glass from his hand, and Foggy closes his eyes. “You gonna take him home, Matt?”

Matt stammers through a reply Foggy can’t quite understand, but it’s a nonsense question anyway, because Matt lives in on campus, uptown, and Foggy’s down in the Kitchen. He almost says as much, but behind his eyelids the darkness is spinning. “Hey, hey, Matty, do you ever get the spins?” he asks, but Josie drags him up by his collar and out into the street. He gets a hug goodbye with Matt, a little tight, a little giggly, before Josie shoves him in a cab and follows him in.

“Such nice skin, fucking hell, Nelson, I hope you die of shame,” she mutters as he nuzzles at the cold glass of the window.

 

* * *

 

 

He does not die of shame. He’s kind of too busy dying of work, because it turns out setting up a tattoo parlour is a fucktonne of work. There’s real estate to haggle over and it feels like half the commercial space in the Kitchen is owned by this one company, and there’s licensing and layout and staffing and _loans_ and banks, jesus, his bank manager keeps begging him to put the word ‘hipster’ in his business plan instead of ‘biker’, but it’s _Hell’s Kitchen_ , come on.

Nights with Matt become phone calls with Matt become long, rambly voicemails they leave each other about finals (seriously, Columbia is like 98% exams from the way Matt tells it) or ink prices. They have one coffee before Matt vanishes into some sort of finals-induced revision hibernation deal, but Foggy’s not really paying attention because he’s wondering how much Josie will cuss him out if he paints the inside of the shop purple.

Josie throws a fit, so it’s one wall purple, one wall umber, one wall _carmine_ (the front is all glass, and the back rooms they keep white, so the health inspectors can have a field day.) He takes on three other artists for day-to-day work, Katie and a couple, Ben and Jennifer, who seem to deliberately arrange their shifts so they see as little of each other as possible. Weirdos. He gets Josie to agree to one day a fortnight (and finish the dragon in time for his opening, hell to the yes) and Rob, sweet Rob, promises to work his way back across country to him.

It’s kind of a surprise when three days after his gala opening (He’s never had to draw so many variations of Captain America’s shield in his life, he misses Rob like a limb) he hears Matt talking to his receptionist, Carla. Except, it’s in Spanish, which, wow, Foggy did not have a thing for languages before. He kinda does now.

“Why, oh why, are we talking about fruit right now?” he asks, as he strolls from the back room. Strolls, because this is his shop, he owns a shop, he is the (part) owner and owners stroll _._ “Vegetables, maybe. Avocados, why are we talking about avocados? Hey, _nice suit_. Sure you’re in the right place, buddy?”

“It sounds about right. And we weren’t talking about avocado. Abogado. Spanish for lawyer.”

“Lawyer? Holy shit, you’re a lawyer now? Thus the snazzy suit, all is clear to me now. Dude, this is huge.”

“I’ve still got to finish my traineeship, and pass the bar,” Matt demurs, but Foggy tucks his arm around his shoulders and drags him to the lobby bench. Carla shoves her headphones back in.

“Don’t be silly. That’s why you’re here, right? To celebrate?”

“Something like that. If you’ve got time and you don’t mind-”

“No, no, I’m free. What were you thinking? Something lawyer-y? What’s bigshot lawyer in Spanish anyway, grande avocado?”

“No, that’s — avocado doesn’t mean anything, that’s aguacates-” Matt looks kind of flustered, but Foggy’s too tired from the opening and high on the fucking joy of the first week to take full advantage and tease to his heart’s content. In a rare show of mercy he lets Matt gather his thoughts. “I want you to give me a tattoo, Foggy.”

“Yeah, I think we’d kinda established that. Oh, you want your freebie? Sure thing, though you probably could have stretched me to two, with celebrating you, and the shop. What do you want?”

“I don’t care. I want _you_ to give it to me,” and, okay, Foggy’s not making up the way Matt’s voice dips, but he _is_ reading in meanings that are not there. Probably. “You pick what it looks like, I’ll pick where it goes.”

“I thought we were past the terrible idea tattoos,” Foggy grumbles to hide the way his heart is racing. He knows it’s a bad call, he _knows that_. Customers choose their designs, not artists. Free rein is tempting, because he is a bad person, but also terrifying. Because suddenly his mind is totally blank. What the fuck can he draw on Matt?

“Never,” Matt laughs. Foggy grabs one of the forms from Carla, one of the Braille forms, because he is a sap. (He ordered twenty. Twenty, all for Matt, and now he doesn’t have a single idea what to put on him). He hands it to Matt, then picks up his sketchpad.

Foggy stares at the white page. He spins his pen in his hands, twiddles, hums and haws. The page stays resolutely blank. “This is a bad idea,” he murmurs again.

Matt tilts his head closer, covers his fidgity right hand with his left. “It’s not. This is a great idea. This is going to be great.” He’s… really intense, actually, and it helps, because Foggy’s single defence mechanism against, like, _feelings_ kicks in hard and he has something to draw. He drags the pen over the page hard, the pointed oval and then the circle, perfected through years of practice, and hands it over.

“If that doesn’t teach you a lesson about bad tattoos, nothing will,” he says.

It takes Matt a moment or two, tracing over both shapes a couple of times. Then his face splits into a grin. “It’s an- it’s an avocado.”

“I never said I made good decisions either, Matty.”

“No, I love it, do it.”

He does. It’s dumb, and ridiculous, and they have to keep taking breaks to laugh because he is tattooing a goddamn avocado on his idiot friend, what is this. He does it right, too — blends his greens and edges his brown with yellow and, sure, he was tempted to go cartoonish, but there’s something more nonsensical, more brilliant about a perfect, realistic avocado half on Matt’s right shoulder.

“Looks good enough to eat,” he says when he’s done and then he snaps his teeth near it, because impulse control, what’s that? Matt shivers and doesn’t laugh and it’s too quiet as he puts the dressing on, takes off his gloves and helps Matt into his shirt.

He talks Matt through aftercare again, cause it’s been a few years since the boxing gloves and Foggy now knows that Matt cannot take care of himself at all. “You’ll let me photograph it in a couple of weeks, right? For the website. I’ll leave a message for you in the alt text.”

“You know you’re legally obligated to make the alt text accessible to all, not just your one blind friend, right?” Matt says, but it’s dry and crisp.

“Hey, I have no problem with letting the rest of the blind community know you are their village idiot, willingly being tattooed with fruit. Vegetables. Plant products. Oh, hey, did you see the sign?”

“Again, blind, gonna go with no.”

“Feel the sign. Touch the sign. Lick the sign, I don’t know, come on.” He leads Matt outside to said sign. It’s very jazzy — Nelson’s, in block letters, very trad, but neons and splashes and all sorts. Of course, he doesn’t expect Matt to appreciate that. But underneath-

“It’s braille,” Matt says, softly. He keeps tracing over it, and it’s cute, and all, but there’s a cold shift in the air that spells rain, and Foggy wants him to reach the punchline.

“There’s a second line,” he explains, and Matt runs his fingers down, finds the sentence — well, paragraph — that made the sign stupidly expensive. More stupidly expensive. (Foggy likes to think of the sign as the bit the Stark grant paid for, being shiny and metal and ostentatious).

“Endorsed by… by Hell’s Kitchen’s number three biker gang — have the Hellions dropped a spot? — and… oh.” Matt stays facing the sign, just as the first fat drop of rain strikes Foggy on the nose. “What happened to _blind_ Matt Murdock?”

“Most people just say Matt Murdock. The way I see it, in a couple of years you’ll be a massive big shot lawyer and this’ll lure in the rich and rebellious crowd. Or, you’ll be dirt poor, defending people who pay you in literal dirt, and your endorsement will get me, well, more of the usual.” He hops, nervous, from foot to foot. “It’s okay, right? I can take it down.”

“Don’t you dare. It’s great, it’s great-” The heavens open and are showing off, apparently, because there’s better water pressure from the rain than Foggy’s ever had in his shower. He is drenched in seconds, turns to run back into his nice dry shop, when Matt shoots out a hand. “Wait. Just for a second.”

“What?” Foggy yells, because the rain is loud, so loud, bouncing off the sidewalk and the scaffolding and plastic sheeting that stretches out, a block every way, thanks to all the construction work.

Matt doesn’t respond, just keeps his face turned to him, head tilted slightly, and if he could see Foggy’d call it a stare, or maybe a gaze.

“Get inside, Matt!”

“I like the rain,” the human towel replies. Foggy shelters in the doorway, arms wrapped round himself, and Matt keeps standing there, a half smile on his face. “It’s illuminating.”

“Oh my god, you are going to die of pneumonia outside my shop in MY FIRST WEEK and get me shut down, you Titanic iceberg person,” Foggy swears. Matt gives him a full smile, then, with teeth, and he should look daft and soggy, not made of sunlight in the pouring rain. Then the fool turns and starts tapping away, before Foggy can steal Carla’s umbrella for him (because Carla is a sensible woman, with an umbrella, where Foggy is _not_ and is planning to stay in the shop until the rain stops).

+

He calls Matt to make a time to photograph the avocado, but something comes up at his work, a fancy lawyers firm on the Upper West Side that Foggy’s kinda afraid to learn the name of in case they charge him to say it. They fall back into phone calls, long conversations when Matt’s staying late every damn night to try to win a permanent job, or Foggy’s sketching out a big piece for a consultation in the morning (the shop’s pulling in a hipster crowd despite his efforts, but they respect their artists, unlike, say, Matt Murdock, so Foggy can deal.)

Every time, as the call peters off, Foggy knows it’s his moment. To ask for coffee, or a drink, and let it mean something this time, two years on from _Elektra_ (still no word, beyond what he’s deduced: rich, evil). He doesn’t have the excuses he had then. Matt’s all fixed up, with a little help from Foggy but mostly through his own hard work.

So, yeah, it’s pretty much just cowardice that makes his goodbyes sound strangled and jaunty. He defends himself to Josie: “He’s a move-maker. I am not a move-maker. If moves are made, he will make them. Although, before you criticise me, I put his _name_ on my sign, possibly frightening him off forever, oh, God, drink, more drink.”

He’s finishing up at his station one evening, with Katie working on some dude who may or may not be Hawkguy in the back and Ben and Jennifer somehow silently communicating about dinner with blank stares, when Matt comes in, wild about the eyes.

“Foggy,” he says, and Foggy does not drop everything, he just puts his machine away in a slightly louder, faster manner. For other, non-Matt reasons.

“Matty, Matty, I know you’ve met Carla, I know you understand the concept of appointments. Would you like to make an appointment for whatever terrible idea you’ve had now?”

“Not really,” Matt says, a little breathless, and Foggy’s reminded of that night, the Elektra night, except where Matt was down and wet and _angry_ , he looks happy. Buzzing, where normally he’d be charming. Every part of him seems little beyond normal — too bright, too dark, too much. “I’ve already made the bad decision, I’m hoping you’ll validate it. Maybe commemorate it?”

Foggy sighs, but he’s already lost. “Come on, let’s see what’s behind door number two,” he says, and leads Matt to the second back room. “Okay, first, I want a picture of my avocado, you owe me.” Matt obligingly shoves up his t-shirt sleeve for the camera, and yes, the greens are just as good as Foggy remembers, excellent work. He snaps a couple shots. “Flex for me?” he jokes, but Matt does, and “Christ, have you been working out _more_? How is that physically possible?”

Matt blushes, and it’s almost like normal, adorable Matt is back, but when Foggy stows the camera away he starts jiggling his knee, and the set to his jaw feels less determined than feral. Like every tiger Foggy’s ever inked.

“So, you quit your job?” Matt nods. “Despite the fact you were  a shoo-in for the permanent position?” Matt nods again. “And you’re going to take up defence work, and be poor and virtuous for all your days.”

“Well, poor, probably. Virtue’s long gone. Good guess.”

“You’ve been quoting Thurgood Marshall down the phone at me for months, Matt, I sensed something in the wind. I’m disappointed, this ranks low in your awful choices. I mean, it’s still probably bad, but you’ve done much worse.”

“Because I quit, Marci Stahl got the job.”

“Aaand we’re in the top ten. Right, okay, since it’s my last chance to get money out of you for, oh, the rest of your life, how am I commemorating this act of martyrdom?”

“I was thinking something biblical.” He’s smirking, bad smirking, Catholic schoolboy smirking, and the Nelsons are a family of lackadaisical protestants, but Foggy sees the appeal.

“Like the flood? The flood of not money coming your way?” It’s been a long time since Foggy so much as looked at a bible. “C’mon, Mr Murdock, you’re the godly one, give a poor sinner some guidance.”

“Song of Solomon,” Matt says, too quick, planned. “Chapter one, verse two.”

“And that would be?”

“Google it.” Matt says, coy, as he perches on the table, looks off to the side. He’s wearing sweats and a t-shirt, like he changed for the gym and changed his mind on the way there, but he’s not got a gym bag with him.

Something’s up, Foggy thinks. Duh, he adds to that thought. It’s not just the job thing, Matt’s twitchy like a cat in a summer storm, and it’s infectious. Internally, at least: Foggy’s hands are still steady as a rock as he taps the search in on his phone and- oh.

_Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth._

“Catholics,” he mutters under his breath. “Okay, this is definitely your boldest choice yet, so, where do you-” He trails off, because Matt is shimmying on the table, working his sweats and underwear low enough that Foggy can see both his hipbones, and he pulls up his shirt just enough that he can confirm the six pack has got even six-ier, pack-ier, whatever.

What Foggy wants to say is ‘Excuse me, I have to go take down and burn every certificate and scrap of paper on the wall that suggests I have a smidge of professionalism, because I don’t, not now, fuck fuck fuckety fuck.’ But when Matt draws a curved line under his own navel with his thumb and then turns his head to him, Foggy’s mouth goes dry. Hell, his entire throat goes dry, all the way down. It’s a struggle to get out “Riiight,” and, yeah, it might sound like more of a whimper. Because _Jesus. Literally Jesus_ , maybe, Foggy doesn’t know his bible, is Song of Solomon about Jesus?

Foggy contemplates the ceiling for a bit. It’s white. The plaster’s still new, only hairline cracks. No answers, though. Foggy’s not even sure what the question is, but he is searching for an answer and the ceiling is being remarkably unforthcoming. If he ever finds an answer, he’s going to paint it on the damn ceiling in letters a foot long.

“That’s gonna hurt like a bitch, Matty,” he offers. There. Responsible. Professional.

Matt smiles with all his teeth. “I can take it.”

“Okay,” he says, in lieu of the proper response. “Okay. Font preference?” He can do this.

Matt digs in his pocket, which, no, sends his sweats even lower for a moment, Foggy can hear his blood pounding in his ears, and it’s rushing away from his head, unhelpfully. He hands over a missal, leatherbound, worn at the edges. Small. For a child. Foggy wants to cry a little, because finally, finally he can design something exactly the way Matt wants it.

If only Matt wasn’t trying to send him to hell, directly to hell, do not pass Go, do not collect $200 at the same time.

“So we're just going for all the sins here?”

“Hopefully.”

Foggy swallows. “Right. Okay. Well, I’ll sketch this up and get a stencil copied, you, uh, tell me about your doomed plans for the future and fill in your forms.” He opens the missal, finds an illuminated L, and starts working up the design. It’s a gorgeous font, he has to admit, light serifs, subtle weighting to the strokes. It’ll look great. It may destroy his sanity, but hey. Sacrifices must be made for beauty.

“My plans are still kind of… up in the air. I’m seeing how a few things turn out.”

“What, pots of gold at the end of rainbows, wishes on stars?”

“Something like that.”

Foggy reaches h and looks up. “We, uh, sticking with original pronouns here, Matt?” Because he knows there have been other girls, not just _Elektra_ , but he knows about boys too, and sometimes he knew that he could reach out-

He doesn’t know that right now.

“Yes, yes, Let him-”

“Awesome, grand.” He cuts Matt off because no, he doesn’t need to hear Matt say it when he can see it, he doesn’t need it on Matt’s hips and his lips at the same time.

Half of the missal is in red. Vermillion red, one of Foggy’s favourite reds. The kind of red no one’s lips have the right to just _be_ and- Hell, hell, Foggy is going to hell. Still, he has to ask. “Hey Matt, you want this in black, or red?” He makes his voice light, natural, not at all showing a preference, but when Matt says _red_ , fast, a little low, Foggy’s thighs clench.

He finishes up the design, sets it up on the thermal copier. The L is triple height, two inches high. The rest in sentence case, one long line. Hipbone to hipbone. For once, he doesn’t show the sketch to Matt, and Matt doesn’t ask for it. Foggy doesn’t think this is _for_ Matt, not really. He tries not to follow that thought too far.

He cleans the skin with care. It’s already been shaved, which Foggy actually doesn’t think about, clients do that all the time. He goes over it again with a safety blade, just to be sure. He applies the stencil. Readies the ink.

He’s wearing gloves, of course, he hasn’t totally lost his senses, but as he holds Matt’s hip to keep him steady as he starts the first letter his wrist brushes bare against the skin below and he has this absurd thought that Matt will be able to feel his pulse racing.

He presses the needle home and Matt doesn’t even twitch, what a champ. Foggy’s own hipbone has seen some tat action and he knows it’s nothing to be taken lightly, but Matt’s just a little tenser, breathing through his nose, and taking it beautifully.

They don’t talk. Foggy can’t think of a word to say, and Matt’s just breathing, slow and deep, almost rhythmically, like he’s meditating. The silence crowds Foggy, but he can handle it.

He finishes the cross of the t, adjusts his chair for the angle on the next word, refocuses. Glances up at Matt, who is biting his bottom lip now, but still breathing in and out, slow and easy. Glances back down, tries to remember how breathing works.

Matt’s hard. Not fully, but enough to pull at the sweats (and oh, Foggy would have sung his praises for the sweats in any other circumstances, the padawan was learning, loose clothing and forward planning). It’s not Foggy’s first such encounter, it’s reasonably common, but it feels the most… personal. Matt’s not doing anything about it, no awkward mention, no request for a break. Foggy can’t make eye contact (thank god, thank all the gods) and he’s damned if he’s bringing it up.

It’s not stretching the skin, the stencil is high enough up Matt’s hips to prevent that. Foggy breathes out through his nose, adjusts his position so there is absolutely no chance of accidentally touching Matt’s dick (touching Matt’s dick, his brain repeats helpfully, touching Matt’s dick) and does his job. Professionally.

He’s finishing ‘me’ when Matt’s hips start twitching. It’s understandable, it’s totally understandable, the needle’s right under his navel, it’s painful, but Foggy has to press down, hard, on the top of Matt’s left hip to keep him still. Matt gasps, a rush of air in, then expels it all at once on an “I’m sorry,” that sounds wrecked, and Foggy knows, knows he should put down the needle, offer Matt some rest, or some time in the bathroom.

Hell, he could use five minutes alone himself. Wouldn’t need longer.

“It’s okay,” he says instead. “You’re doing great.”

They get through ‘with’ and ‘the’ without further incident (well, Matt might be harder, _Foggy certainly is_ , but they don’t come close to acknowledging it.) Just once during ‘kisses’ Foggy makes the mistake of looking up at Matt’s face, while moving his stool round to Matt’s right, and he’s bitten his lips a different colour, Christ.

Not long after they hit some kind of threshold with the pain, because Matt’s problem vanishes fast and Foggy can hear in his breath that he’s trying not to cry.

“We can stop,” he says, barely audible over the whir of the machine. “Do you want to stop?”

“No,” Matt says, and the stubborn lock of his jaw is back.

The word ‘of’ is tricky, he has to slide the sweats down another half inch to get the tail of the f perfect. After that, ‘his’ is easy, the letters practically familiar after the torture of getting them down first time.

“Almost there,” he says as he starts the last word. Before he puts the needle to skin he hears the door to the other studio go. Katie, and her client, the maybe Avenger. Foggy had forgotten they existed. He’s frozen, and so’s Matt, listening as the client leaves and Katie walks along the corridor. Stops outside the door. Moves on. Leaves.

He’s not sure if he’s relieved or disappointed, but he knows that if that door opens — when that door opens, he is going to have to leave eventually, let Matt go — he’ll never be able to pretend he’s just Matt’s friend.

Time dilates. It always does when Foggy’s working, but he couldn’t say whether it takes him an hour or twenty minutes to finish ‘mouth’. It could be either. When it’s done he can’t say anything for a full minute, just sits, hands on the edge of the table, inches from Matt’s skin. His jeans are tight, he can’t imagine his face is anything but red, and Matt may be blind, but Foggy’s certain the second he opens his mouth Matt’ll be able to hear it.

What then? It’s the question that’s held him back for months. Years maybe. The question the ceiling still, obstinately, does not have an answer for.

“Are we done?” Matt asks, voice more like a rumble, and Foggy drags his eyes off the tattoo, off those words, up, past the sheen of sweat on Matt’s abs, staining his T-shirt, to his eyes, bright and wet and for all the pain and, Foggy guesses, pleasure of the past couple hours, still wild.

“Yeah,” Foggy says. He wets his lips. “Yeah, buddy, we’re done, I’ll just get you a dressing-”

“Wait, let me feel it,” and god, Matt sounds as hollow as he does, he should never have done this, but, oh, he watches as Matt runs trembling fingers over the raised lines. It has to hurt, he knows, and it’s bad tattoo care, but Foggy’s never been harder in his life.

“Jesus,” he breathes.

“It’s perfect,” and Matt might be about to cry, Matt might cry while Foggy is nursing a hard on like a creeper, this is awful.

“It’s gorgeous.” Foggy’s brain and mouth are clearly not helping today. He applies the ointment and the dressing, his hands _shaking_ for the first time he can remember, then he turns away to bin the needle and the gloves. Not looking at Matt seems to break some kind of spell — he can take a deeper breath, and it’s with something like his usual tone of voice he can say, “Tell you what, Matty, that’s gonna get you _results_.”

Matt doesn’t laugh. The silence presses in again, and Foggy feels the weight of his misjudgement. No broken spell. Nope, this is a curse. And then.

And then.

And then.

“Doesn’t seem to be working so far.” Matt sounds cool, unconcerned, very un-Matt, but when Foggy turns (too fast, a pivot, like a compass needle to true north) his teeth are clenched, jaw locked, one hand a fist, and it could be because he’s sitting up, gingerly, in yet another bad decision for someone who just got their hips inked, but Foggy knows better.

Foggy _knows_ better.

He touches two fingers to the hook of Matt’s jaw, then slides his hand to cup the side of his face, gentle, but fast. Matt turns his head, just slightly, so Foggy’s thumb is resting on that fat, abused bottom lip.

“Hey, Matty,” Foggy says, and Matt surges to his feet, gets both his hands on Foggy’s face and pulls him in with unnerving, unerring accuracy.

“Kiss me,” he hisses against Foggy’s mouth. _I was getting there_ , Foggy tries to say, with a soft kiss to Matt’s top lip, but Matt’s having none of it, kissing back like he’s trying to bruise, mouth as wine-dark as his glasses. He keeps trying to move closer, which is not physically possible, and Foggy has just enough presence of mind to drop his hands to Matt’s waist and hold him still before his hips start hitching.

Foggy catches Matt’s groan of frustration with his mouth. “You just got your _hips_ tattooed, Matt, grinding is off the menu.” He lets his thumbs drag under Matt’s T-shirt, over a ridge of muscle. “Should probably keep things strictly above the waist.”

“Objection,” Matt says, and Foggy has to kiss the words ‘show off’ up his jaw to his ear.

“C’mon, sit down, we’re going to sit on the bench and make out like teenagers and the best you’re getting is maybe a pat on the knee,” he orders, and it’s a lie, such a lie, but Matt takes off his glasses and sits with a grin like he knows that. He probably does, Foggy’s kind of shown his hand. Still, it’s sort of thrilling to sit beside him and go slow, feel the rasp of Matt’s stubble against his chin, the pads of his fingers.

“You got rid of the beard,” Matt says, absently, like he hasn’t been touching Foggy’s face a lot for the past few minutes.

“How’d you know I had a beard?”

“I got Karen to describe you.”

“Dude, when?”

“The first time.” Matt reaches back, taps against the tramp stamp, and Foggy follows with his left hand, tangles his fingers with Matt’s over the mark he put there, god, almost four years ago. God bless Marci Stahl.

“The first time, huh?” Foggy teases, lets his fingers dip a little where Matt’s sweats are still low to expose his hips.

“Oh, please, you weren’t any better, you should’ve heard your- your voice,” Matt says, huffs a laugh against Foggy’s temple before kissing him again, right across his smile. He opens his mouth obligingly when Foggy grazes his lower lip with his teeth. He loses a little time there, in Matt’s mouth, hands skittering up his sides, trying to find his soft parts (his cheeks, the join of his neck and, Foggy would hazard a guess, the top of his ass, but _above the waist_ is still the rule of the game.)

He cups the top of Matt’s arm, right over the gloves, and Matt yelps and moans at once. “What the fuck, Matty?” Foggy whispers, even though there is no one else there, it’s his own damn shop. He rubs his thumb across the tattoo, and it’s clean, there’s no scarring, it should not be painful, but Matt fucking whimpers and Foggy starts to panic. A little. In a professional context.

Except then Matt tilts his jaw and Foggy rubs across the red (carmine, cardinal, scarlet) again and watches, sees how Matt’s pulse jumps in his neck and his stomach tenses and, yeah, that’s definitely a semi in Matt’s sweats again. “It’s not bad,” Matt pants, voice wet. “I- I know it’s there, and you put it there, and that’s _good,_ that’s so _good_ , Foggy, call me Matty again, please.”

“Matty, Matty, Matty-” The waist rule goes flying out the — well, it’s a windowless room, but it’s gone. Matt’s hips thrust upwards into nothing, into air, but it lets Foggy get a hand on his ass, squeeze it, and Matt bites his response into his throat, the vampire. Matt gropes his knee and then, without so much as a semblance of subtlety, drags the flat of his hand up Foggy’s thigh to palm at his dick.

“Can I?” he begs into Foggy’s mouth, which is kinda beside the point because he already _is_ , but Foggy nods anyway. Both of Matt’s hands dive for his fly and Foggy has to grip the bench for support. Matt’s fingers are quick, and strong, and before Foggy can even draw breath Matt’s got his dick in a grip that makes his eyes roll. “Can I suck you?” Matt says, and of course he doesn’t say blow, of course he says suck with a curl on the c that makes Foggy jolt.

“Yeah,” Foggy says, but he leans and gets a hand behind the nape of Matt’s neck, holds him there for a kiss, holds him steady. He rests their foreheads together. “But maybe not in my sterilised tattoo studio where I have to work every day for the foreseeable future?”

Matt whines. “Your apartment’s what, four blocks from here?” Foggy tries to imagine walking four blocks. It doesn’t end well. “There’s an alley-”

“Matt, no, no filthy alley sex, you have to keep new tattoos clean-”

“I meant as a shortcut,” Matt says, laughing, but then Foggy gets to watch an idea dawn across his gorgeous face. “If I can’t suck you in a studio,” he muses, ignoring Foggy’s groan, the stutter of his name, “is the hallway fair game?”

They move together to the door, which involves a lot of tripping over each other, Foggy holding his jeans up with one hand, the other holding Matt’s, and it’s impossible not to laugh. Foggy manages to pull away long enough to shuffle to the counter and grab a string of condoms from the freebies bowl they offer customers, and Matt must _very familiar_ with the crinkle, because he’s reaching for one before Foggy even explains what he’s doing. It makes him laugh into a kiss, at least until Matt pins his shoulders to the wall with surprising strength.

The lights are off, everything caught in half darkness, street light and neon filtering in through the shop window, the coloured walls glowing. Foggy’s in shadow, but the light from the back room throws Matt into profile, half light, half dark. A kiss, two, three, and Matt starts to pull away, bend his knees, but Foggy pulls him back.  

“Shirt, off.” He drags it off Matt’s body. “I want something pretty to look at,” he explains, splays his fingers over his avocado. Matt ghosts his fingers across Foggy’s stomach, so he shirks his vests as well, and, woah, it’s odd to have someone run their hands across his chest with no regard for the lines and whorls.

Matt’s thumb catches on the ring through his nipple and _his_ breath catches. He wets his lips. “I didn’t know about that.”

Foggy smiles. “I’m full of hidden depths. And piercings.” Matt puts his mouth to the metal and Foggy’s hips jerk forward, into Matt’s, and he hisses in pain but doesn’t let up running his tongue over, around, over. “Please God let this be your reaction to every single one of them.”

Matt goes to his knees with an ease born of practice (Catholic, Foggy reminds himself. Catholic and slutty.) He pulls Foggy's jeans and pants to his knees, wraps his right hand around the base of his dick, opens the condom packet with his teeth and rolls it on. Then he lowers his mouth.

A cop car, lights flashing, speeds past, and for a second all Foggy can see is the dark of Matt’s lashes against suddenly blue skin, the sheen of his hair, the deep obscene stretch where everything red is cast bruise-purple in the light, from the flush across Matt’s cheeks to his lips to the root of Foggy’s cock.

_Fucking gorgeous._

Matt pulls off, rubs his mouth with a thumb and finger and leans back over his knees, supple, _bendy_ — Foggy can't actually get distracted, but his brain files it away for later. The sweats have slipped down further, so Foggy can just see Matt’s cockhead, dark and insistent.  “Talk to me.”

Foggy talks. Matt stretches back to his dick with a long lick, and yeah, it's kind of a struggle to concentrate but Foggy keeps the patter going: “Jesus, Matty, your mouth.” It's not exactly sparkling conversation, but it seems enough for Matt. “Do you know how long I've thought about your mouth? Do you know how many times I've drawn it? It's fucking perfect, I could offer it as flash art and half of New York would have it before Christmas, I swear. I won't though, because-” _because I don't want to share_ , he wants to say, but even though Matt’s removing his braincells individually with each twist of his tongue, he's got enough self-preservation to claim too much, too soon. “Because it's yours,” he says instead.

Matt takes him deep, spit running from the corner of his mouth, before pulling off again with a kitten-lick flourish. He rests his forehead against Foggy's thigh, nuzzles his cheek against his dick. “Right now, Foggy? It's all yours.”

Foggy can’t say much to that, stunned (even though later he'll explain, at length, how terrible a line it is) so he runs his thumb over Matt’s spit-shiny lips. Matt nips the pad, holds down with his teeth for one second, two, as his right hand, still on Foggy’s dick, squeezes. An insistent tingle begins at the base of his spine. “So, given the three hours of intense foreplay, you’re okay with this being quick, right?”

Matt smirks. Foggy senses a pun, as well as an orgasm, on the way. “I was counting four years of foreplay, if anything this has been incredibly slow in _coming_.” He grabs Foggy’s hand and guides it to his hair as he sinks back down. Foggy doesn’t pull — he’s very much not into hair pulling, even if people assume his ponytail means yank here for orgasms — but he strokes and pets and gentles even while his mouth runs the full gamut from sailor to whore.

“Jesus fuck you’re hot. Inside and out, and wet, I don’t think I’ve ever felt any mouth as wet as yours, you know that?”  He can feel a fresh prickle of sweat across his back, behind his knees — everywhere that’s not either pressed against the wall, or against Matt.

Matt hums a little and curls his hand around the back of Foggy’s thigh, takes him in deeper with a little effort and a sharp inhale through his nose. Foggy drops his fingers to Matt’s cheek just as it hollows out. “God, you’re good at that,” he says, quiet, and Matt curls his tongue and sucks hard and Foggy comes, eyes open and gasping. _"Matty.”_

From bitter experience Foggy knows that tying off a condom can never be sexy, but that’s not to say that Matt doesn’t try. Well, first he tries taking it off with his teeth, which, no, so Foggy has to push him away and remind his brain that basic motor functions are a thing.

“Next time, no condom,” Matt says, spitting the taste of latex onto his fingers, and Foggy’s heart does a little pirouette even as his brain reminds him that yes, they will be using condoms _next time_ , and the time after that, until they’ve had complete blood work done because he did not sit through the slideshow at his bloodborne disease prevention course for nothing, god dammit.

“Let’s get through the first time before that,” he replies, because although Matt’s smirking like the cat with the proverbial, slouched back on his ass with his thighs spread, his pressing need is extremely obvious. So, Foggy gets to pressing it.

He bends, but only to pull Matt to his feet for a kiss. Matt almost seems disappointed that Foggy’s not totally boneless, until he realises just how much he needs the wall for support. “Yeah, yeah, you’re a sex god, I’m sure we’re all shocked,” he mutters into Matt’s mouth. Matt’s slower now, happy to kiss his way across Foggy’s face like he’s the one who came, which is impressive, but not really Foggy’s preference. To make his point, he wastes no time in shoving Matt’s sweatpants and briefs down until they drop to the floor.

Maybe it’s a little selfish, but he really wants to get a hand on Matt’s dick.

Okay, so he very much enjoys the minute he spends with both hands on Matt’s ass, but Matt turns when he asks and yeah, he’s still a little too sensitive to really _enjoy_ it, but it feels just as good against his hips. Foggy wishes he could jerk Matt off face to face — he’s pretty invested in just how that mouth’ll move when he comes — but when he brushes against his hip Matt hisses in pain.

(And, okay, also his dick jerks in Foggy’s hand, but he has rules and he has _rules_ , and that’s gonna require a lot more conversation than Matt, spread out on the bench, saying _‘I can take it’_.)

(Christ)

He’s careful of the bandage as he rolls on a condom. “Really?” Matt whines. (Who would have thought, Matt Murdock, king of bad decisions, would be into risky sex? Foggy. Foggy would have thought that. A lot.) Foggy runs a finger across the edge of the dressing, catches a drop of precum on the wiry hair just below it.

“No spunk on my tattooing, Murdock. I put a lot of hard work into that.”

“I can think of some other hard work that needs doing-ah!”

“That’s terrible, Matt.” It’s a little trickier with a condom, a little more middle school, but Foggy’s had a lot of time to master the reach around. A squeeze with every upstroke, a twist with every down, and a rhythm just this side of irregular that makes Matt’s feet arch when the next move comes too quick, too slow.

Matt’s head lolls back against Foggy’s shoulder, so he licks up his neck and sucks a bruise at the base of his jaw. “You still with me, Matt?” He watches Matt’s mouth open, shut, open again without a sound, and speeds his hand, just a little. When he drags a hand down Matt’s chest, grazes a nipple, the man’s torso jackknifes, and it’s only Foggy’s shoulder that stops him braining himself on the wall. “Sensitive,” Foggy says, then, hurriedly, “Sensitive is good. We can have so much fun with sensitive.”

Matt turns his face into Foggy’s cheek and inhales. If he wasn’t sure that he only smelled of sweat and spunk, he’d have said Matt was trying to sniff him. “Fa- Fu-Foggy.”

“Mhmm?”

“Fogg-” It’s sudden, like the twist of a cork, though while Matt’s knees sag his chest heaves. Foggy twists and ties off the condom before it can go cold and clammy in his hand, and has the presence of mind not to wipe the smear of lube off on his skin. Thankfully, Carla keeps tissues on her desk because she of all of them is a _functioning adult_ , so it's only a quick hobble, jeans still round his knees, to clean up.

He reminds himself, then immediately forgets, to make sure he's the next one to empty the trash, and sends a quick prayer to the health inspector gods not to send their foul votary too soon.

He leaves Matt leaning against the wall and when he turns back it's like a surrealist Christ coming down from the cross (hey, he may not know his Bible, but he knows his art.) There's a softness to Matt without his glasses (and most of his clothes) that Foggy recognises from coffees and movie nights but that now, he thinks, he guesses, might be more for him alone than he'd suspected.

He reaches out to touch Matt’s shoulder, just above his avocado, and Matt presses into the touch, so he strokes down his back, wraps his other arm around his waist, and it's a cuddle, it's a weird, no-hips sideways cuddle in which the wall is an enthusiastic third participant.

There's a thick sheen across Matt’s skin, all the more obvious for how blank it is, and Foggy idly imagines filling it up, draws a finger over his ribs, down to his abs in swirls and zig zags as Matt presses his nose even further into Foggy's collarbone.

He has _so many_ ideas, and so much space to work with.

And, yeah, he hopes, thinks, all time in the world to fill them in.

**Author's Note:**

> First work in this delightful fandom (first work on this archive!), grateful for all feedback. Pathetically, humiliatingly grateful.
> 
> Cameos: Rob, Tom and Clint are the men Foggy points out to Karen at Josie's. They all have brilliant tattoos.


End file.
